Minecraft

DISCLAIMER. THIS IS NOT A CHILDS GAME, I REPEAT, THIS IS NOT A CHILDS GAME. HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A CHILD MAKE THIS WITHOUT COPYING A YOUTUBE VIDEO?

At one point or another, I’m pretty sure everyone has either heard of, played or watched something to do with Minecraft. This incredibly popular game first came into Beta; December 20th 2010 and was fully released November 18th 2011, given how long ago that was, Minecraft could still be considered the most popular game of all time. The original developer, Notch, created what I consider to be the perfect Sandbox game, it is now in the hands of Microsoft and they continue to do an amazing job making each and every free update better than the last.

When I first played Minecraft back in Beta update 1.3, the update which introduced the immensely useful Bed block to help you skip those pesky nights, I was on a rubbish PC in the corner of my Nan’s living room. The game had such a simple premise and yet there was nothing else like it? It was so engrossing and sparked a creative side of me that no game ever has. Minecraft definitely took time to get itself on its feet, with a lot of design choices that made little sense which were eventually changed. Why didn’t food stack? Why did Notch think this was a good idea? Why?

The game has, in recent years, been taken in by a large audience of children due to popular Youtubers making it a staple in their regular content. At its core though, the majority of hardcore players are the adults such as myself that grew up with the game as it slowly evolved into what it is today. However, as I found myself growing up I found that creativity is not what it used to be, due to this Minecraft is not a game that I come home and play every day like I did when I was at school, now it is a game that I tend to play with my Girlfriend and friends every so often. It tends to be a binge session of Minecraft once a year after a new update has come out and then we will put it back down and come back at a later date.

To me, this is what Minecraft represents, something you can play with your friends and have zero competition throughout. No one can be bad at Minecraft, which is what I think a lot of games today lack as there always needs to be a winner in modern games but Minecraft still encapsulates that feeling of accomplishment even if it is something small. If it’s a building playstyle you enjoy, or an explorative one Minecraft encourages you to do so and doesn’t penalize you for not doing the other. No other game gives you this feeling like Minecraft does.

The community that Minecraft has is astoundingly creative, some amazing builders are apart of this community, recreating amazing scenes such as large cities from Lord of the Rings or the entirety of Hogwarts, even with its own Flu Network system just like the Harry Potter series. I will include a picture beneath this paragraph as some of these builds are jawdroppingly good. Not only does the community have amazing builders, it has an amazing array of Mod developers too. These developers can sometimes be aspiring game developers, content creators or simply bored players that think their mod is a feature that should be in the game, some of which actually inspire in-game updates.

So I’m going to wrap this one up, I know it was a short one but Minecraft is such a simple yet beautifully made game that it doesn’t need long rambling paragraphs about each individual feature, the game simply speaks for itself. I just hope that in another 10 years, this game is still as popular as it is today.

Harry.

I am bad at this, I am sorry. It totally hasn’t been a month since my last post. Nope, totally not. P.S I put a full stop in the title just for you Sam. Every. Time.

ARK: Survival Evolved

Now, as I am sure I mentioned before in my Jurassic World: Evolution blog post, I have always had a fascination with dinosaurs, as long as I can remember actually. ARK: Survival Evolved has taken this to a whole new level with ingenious mechanics and a very in-depth endgame grind that involves not only exploration but a wide array of creatures to tame in easy ways or sometimes incredibly difficult ways that will test the strongest survivors skills and wits to their limit.

ARK starts you off by spawning you in a variety of locations which the player can choose from, some vastly more difficult than the others. It is a harsh and dangerous world for the player as you not only have to spend the first day collecting resources to make sure you don’t die in the open, you also have to collect food and drink water. The survival aspects are certainly more in-depth than something like Minecraft, but are very easy to understand and master, special clothes are required to survive in different climates and there are even certain types of building materials for hotter climates to help circulate air to keep the player cool.

Something ARK does better than other survival games is it boasts a simple but really enjoyable RPGesque leveling system to increase stats to better prepare the player. Leveling in ARK is something I thoroughly enjoy as not only do you level but the dinosaurs you tame level too allowing for your creatures to have different “builds.” I use the term loosely as there isn’t much you can do with the leveling system, but it is incredibly satisfying when you are widely overleveled and casually exploring the islands one shotting every creature with your level 400 T-Rex.

However, alongside all these enjoyable mechanics, building is a little underwhelming. It is very finicky, often at times infuriating. Often building materials won’t place where you wish them to or one tiny stone can makes it impossible to build. This isn’t to say that there isn’t a skill to building in ARK, some online content creators have amazing build styles and can use the terrain to their advantage and really make a build pop, I on the other hand, cannot. I tend to just build in flat open spaces and build large compounds in which to keep all my creatures and store all my resources, but that is just how I enjoy the game.

The game is visually stunning, has incredible atmospheric environments with an incredible sound design and often at times can be quite terrifying. The visual details on the creatures are impeccable, not one creature can be considered ugly in design unless….they have been designed to be….ugly. Some creatures are covered entirely in feathers which individually move, some are covered in a slimy skin that shimmers in the light of the area you are in. DLCs tend to have some form of reskin creatures but are often done in a unique and interesting way. For example, the Abberation DLC is set entirely underground because the surface world is too dangerous to be populated by man. With this DLC comes creatures from the base game but are given a unique skin to make them glow in the dark which certainly makes them stand out more than their base game counterparts.

Speaking of DLCs, the game receives a lot of large DLCs that give the player an entirely new map to explore, each with their own secrets and creatures to discover. One of my favourites was the Scorched Earth DLC which added Wyverns, a form of Dragon that can only be tamed by stealing fertilized eggs from nests and raising them as your own. Which is quite awful when you think about it, but who cares? Dragons! The DLCs always have a unique end game to them which is what makes them unique, these tend to come in the form of Raid Bosses that require careful planning and usually up to 20 players, to take down humongous titans. One of which is a large Spider known as the Broodmother than summons smaller spiders to overwhelm the players so she can comfortable sit back and shoot venom at you, this however is a base game boss, not a DLC one.

This leads into the ARK “story?” It is very disconnected and requires a lot of reading to understand but the actual premise is so simple that it borders cliche. Aliens are trying to see if Earth is habitable yet by testing survivors in simulated worlds full of dinosaurs called Arks, which by the way are all floating in space. See what I mean? If you want to play ARK for the story, I recommend something else, but each raid boss defeated helps progress the story to some degree.

I just want to say, this game has its bugs and broken mechanics that can sometimes ruin the experience for the player, but don’t let it deter you. It is an awesome game with a wide variety of things to do and once you master them you feel like a badass, riding your Wyvern of Ice across a valley of dinosaurs freezing them all in place. Lastly, if you can, play this game with friends on a private server, the gameplay experience is much more refined in Multiplayer and with friends, I know this as most of my experiences with this game are singleplayer.

Harry.

Apologies for not uploading a post in a while, my blog was sick and I had to socially distance myself from it. Anyway, moving on….

Now that we have reached the half way point of my “Top 10 Games of the Decade,” I figured I should take a post to talk a little bit about the games that didn’t make it to list and why they didn’t. These are all very, very good games and deserve all the praise and awards they achieved. These games are very similar in-terms of genre mostly being RPGs but all from different franchises and publishers so I feel like there is a diverse selection!

Elder Scrolls: Online

In 2013, I happen to be one of the lucky few to be selected for the first ever ESO beta. As excited as I was, I was skeptical as I had never played a large-scale MMO before and also had no friends to play it with for quite a few years afterwards, a trend that happens quite often for me. The beta was fun but definitely made me want the main game, which I obviously purchased day one.

However, for the first year the game was a tad dull and lacked anything that really pulled me in to keep playing, the game really punished you for not having people to consistently play with and was a big turn off for me, because I am socially inept. Over the next few years though, leading up to 2018 the game had major improvements and large content drops, this is when I decided to pick it back up, purchase the dlcs and continue where I left off. This time I had my girlfriend to play through the game with and we played a huge portion of it and really enjoyed it. The game has a huge learning curve and can become quite in-depth, which you would expect from any large-scale MMO.

Whilst definitely an improved and much more fun game with a wider variety of classes and races to choose from, this game only deserved honorable mention and not top 10 due to the reasons above. It is still a game that I dabble in from time to time however and will continue to do so!

Spider-Man PS4

“Don’t forget the hyphen between Spider and Man.”

This game is the best version of Peter Parker we have ever had on screen, there I said it. The game was phenomenal and although I never finished it, I did get to the end of the game and I do know how it ends. I couldn’t bring myself to finish it because once it is over, it’s over forever, that feeling of experiencing the story for the first time.

The Spider-Man PS4 game exceeded expectations and might be tied for the best PS4 game with God of War. It does however have an issue that most superhero games, films and books always have, which is the fact that the plot tends to be rather predictable and lacks surprise. Which is why I could not justify its place in Top 10 over the other games and how much I enjoyed them or how much they meant to me. The game does have some incredible surprising moments, such as the introduction of Mile Morales and the events which cause him to become a Spider-Man, or the Sinister Six and Otto Octavius’s decent into madness.

This is a game that I will have to build up the courage to finish which is something I might not be able to do until the sequel is announced, the game is very much deserving of a sequel especially with the secret ending reveal. Spider-Man PS4 is a wonderful journey from start to finish and I look forward immensely to the sequel and seeing where this new adaptation of Spider-Man goes for the playstation consoles!

Also the boat NPC’s.

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel

Oh Borderlands: TPS, the game that could of been. A fantastic story based entry to the amazing series that is Borderlands, also adding some of the best vault hunters we have had in the series, the game simply let me down in the gameplay department as the game simply drags out in so many different ways.

The game has the amazing premise of explaining the backstory of the tyrannical leader, Handsome Jack, and his rise to power. This falls short because once you have experienced it for the first time the game never has that same spark that the other entries in the franchise have. Like most Borderlands games, the story starts of slow and picks up somewhere near the end of the first act, or the beginning of the second, however TPS doesn’t pick up till the third act and it takes a good 6 hours to get through to that point of the story if you wish to do everything.

As a completionist I simply cannot go through any game without doing everything. This of course does come with some amazing highlights such as the introduction of Laser weapons, the zero gravity atmosphere allowing for a lot of in air combat and to repeat myself, the incredible story of Jack’s rise to power and decent into madness. The game also has so many nods and Easter eggs to the previous installments in the series, such as the overturned picture of Jack’s daughter on his office desk after he saw into his future as to what he does to his daughter, or the amazing DLC campaign about how Jack destroyed the Claptrap product line.

With all the bad stuff aside, I have still had some amazing playthroughs and made some great memories with this game and if I ever feel like going back and playing the old Borderlands games again once the Borderlands 3 hype train has made its final stop I will certainly play TPS again.

Dragon Age: Inquisition

Actually one of my favourite games of the decade and at the current time of writing I am replaying through the game on PC, I originally played it on PS4, and it is just as delightful as I remember! However, Dragon Age: Inquisition has the exact opposite problem as the afore mentioned game, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. The build up to the final act is incredible, a lot of sidequests and vast open maps to explore and loot, whilst the final act almost feels rushed and unpolished. It was not memorable at all other than the exciting reveal at the end, which I shall not spoil, I actually cannot remember what happens at the end which is why I am playing through it again.

The game is heavily based around the politics of a mythical land as an evil storm has opened above the destroyed “Conclave” tearing a rift in the dimensions allowing the world of demons to pour into our own. Your character, the Inquisitor, is tasked with closing the mighty rift by mastering his new found power by closing smaller rifts. It is a cliche story, one heroic figure has the power to save us all, but the politics of the game are so captivating that it really opens up the story more than you would think. Having to recruit different members to your inquisition, really helped feel like you were progressing towards something big and climactic. Like I mentioned though, it didn’t feel like the ending was very climatic at all, from a mediocre villain to leaving the player on a cliff hanger waiting on the next installment. The whole ending was undermined compared to the dramatic journey you took to get there.

The game has so many amazing moments and fights, specifically the Dragon fights which were so incredibly done and very challenging. I definitely enjoyed the game, but the fact I simply cannot remember how it ends really ruins the enjoyment for me and that is why it didn’t make the top 10.

Destiny 2.

Oh boy, do I have a lot to say about this game? Yes. Will I in this post? No. I will do a separate post covering my in-depth feelings towards Destiny 2 and how the game has come along in the past 3 years it has been released. For now though, I will leave it short and sweet.

Destiny 2 was the sequel I really wanted to a game I loved so dearly, Destiny, however it fell flat on its face as the game has had far too many downs and not enough ups. Whilst the game is incredibly fun and has so many more in-depth mechanics and systems that are light-years better than Destiny’s, it simply doesn’t make me forget about the original Destiny like it should. When I load up Destiny 2 and play it all it does is make me miss the enjoyment and times I had in Destiny. The game is not as social any more as the games population is split completely down the middle as with the release of Destiny 2 came its PC release. This is where my main issue lies.

The game runs like a dream on PC, it is currently my preferred way of playing as 60+ Frames is something I simply cannot let go of any more, but the game just doesn’t have the population on PC to keep me engaged. On PS4 in the original Destiny I had a large clan full of close friends who all got on at weekly reset every Tuesday morning to play and now, because of Destiny 2s poor launch, none of them play any more and I moved to PC. It always feel like a struggle to get any endgame activities done on PC as I am always using an external group finding tool rather than playing with people I know.

This however doesn’t take away from the amazing points Destiny 2 has, the PvE (Player vs Environment) is so much better than Destiny’s. It is far more expansive and diverse with more things to do rather than just simply, strikes and a raid. It introduced interesting game modes like Gambit and Competitive, I will get into these more in-depth another time, whilst also keeping that core feeling the original Destiny had in its PvE activities. The raids are so much better in terms of mechanics but certainly not in terms of how they feel as an experience.

I really love Destiny and I think I will always play the new content when it comes out and will always enjoy it, but the main reason this never made my top 10 is because it simply lost that spark that Destiny had and I sincerely hope one day it comes back!

Thank you for reading this, I am very bad at giving myself a set time for these posts and I hope to improve upon this but as you can tell, I love video games, so they tend to take up most of my time.

Harry.

Welcome back to your regularly scheduled programming.

KINGDOM HEARTS III

Once again another game I am super excited to talk about! Well, these are my top games, if I wasn’t excited about them then all the posts would be pretty redundant. By now you can see that two of my previous games, and soon a few more of my further up games, are continuations of a series of games, remakes or sequels to games. This is because I can get very invested into a series much like the “Marvel Cinematic Universe” films or the series “Stranger Things” on Netflix. I find this is due to the fact I get very invested into the lives of characters or just become loyal to the franchise as a whole. There are of course, negatives and exceptions to this rule, one being if a sequel is disappointing I find myself unable to continue playing that series. This isn’t the case with Kingdom Hearts III.

Kingdom Hearts III was the sequel to 2012’s “Kingdom Hearts: Dream, Drop, Distance.” However, it is considered as a “main series game,” something the franchise hasn’t seen since 2005 with the release of “Kingdom Hearts II.” The story takes place literally right after Kingdom Hearts: 3D and sees the main characters go on their final quest to save three long lost Keyblade wielders that haven’t been seen for eleven years, except for Aqua who hasn’t been seen since the time of Kingdom Hearts – the original – which was set three years before this game. In the meantime, Xehanort (Zay-a-nort) is quietly collecting his thirteen darkness’s to start the legendary and prophesied Keyblade War.

For me, this game was my most anticipated game of the past ten years as I only played Kingdom Hearts II in 2011 because PlayStation 2 games were difficult to get a hold of at the time, also being a 14 year old with no money didn’t help. This series of games got progressively more and more in-depth as each new side game was released, each one slightly progressing the plot to this climactic event. The release of Kingdom Hearts III definitely tore the community in two with one half being completely satisfied and fulfilled with the story and happy with how it concluded, and the other half being disappointed in the lack of endgame content and the fact the story was left open for the next future installment inevitably coming.

The latter does not include me. I adore this game. It has its faults of course and they are undeniably there, but, they are simply so negligible to the overall feel of the game and reason that I play that I can easily over look them, but I will get into them because I think that is only fair to talk about them. This game included new Disney worlds such as, Toy Story, Pirate of the Caribbean, Frozen and Monsters Inc. There are more of course, but these were definitely my favourite. The worlds were vastly improved in comparison to the last main series game’s worlds. The Toy Story world constantly had background music that was a remake of the iconic “You Got a Friend in Me” song, you were also miniaturized into a toy to fit into the world. Seeing wooden toy versions of Donald, Goofy and Sora just felt so right, like you were sitting there and watching these characters in the actual Pixar films.

I could go on about the reasons why each world was individually amazing but I feel I could go on for a long, long time. I will sum it up and say that you actually felt like you were playing in the Disney films. It felt like Sora and the gang were making impacts to the stories of the movies they were obviously a part of, or the worlds they were in. It was much more immersive and engaging than in Kingdom Hearts II where you were essentially dealing with a side story whilst the main Disney plot was progressing. This was not the case for all Kingdom Hearts II worlds, which I feel I need to clarify. However, the Disney worlds in Kingdom Hearts III definitely didn’t feel like a necessity to the plot, they were obviously there to keep the trend of Disney related content in the franchise but filling the time before you got to the climactic final act of the story. This was a very obvious negative, but each individual worlds story felt so immersive and were quite honestly fun that this obvious negative just simply didn’t matter to me.

To conclude my praising before I get to my negative points, the final act of this game was one I honestly think I will remember for the rest of my life. It felt so rewarding to see how this saga of the Kingdom Hearts story ended, I was so giddy and excited with every new reveal or plot development that happened. So many things that I never saw coming and many things that I did, of course, see coming. I must state, I am not well versed with the Kingdom Hearts lore or theories, so some the community hypothesized and got correct were things I simply didn’t see coming. For the last few hours of the game I was at the edge of my seat the whole time, it was filled with heart breaks and epic moments of heroism and incredibly satisfying villainous moments. If you can’t tell, I am really trying to praise the final act without giving away spoilers in case my friend Sam sees this as at this current time, he has not finished the game.

Now…my issues with this beautiful, but flawed game. I mentioned above that the Disney worlds were obvious fillers and didn’t progress the plot in anyway, so I got that out of the way. This does not excuse some other problems though, for example, the new “gimmick” of the game which was of course, the Disney amusement park rides. They were just awful. They felt like cheap, get out of death buttons and were so over powered it was so unrewarding to use them, there were points during the story where you were forced to use them and it really took away from the moment that was being created. Luckily in an update they added a function to turn these off but it should of been there from the beginning, they just felt so out of place in this really serious feeling game and whilst a nice idea just simply didn’t coexist well within the tone of the game.

Square Enix also added a new “selfie” feature which was required to complete one of the side objectives in which you had to photograph “lucky emblems” scattered across the world. It just felt, for lack of a better word, cringey. It was obviously their way of appealing to a modern audience as the world has changed a lot in the fourteen years since Kingdom Hearts II was released, but was just so out of place, to suddenly add a mobile phone into the series as a form of keeping the characters in contact with one another? This also came hand in hand with the “amazing” Instagram-esque loading screens each tailored to the individual character who posted them, hashtags included. It simply wasn’t necessary, however, being loading screens it was excusable and not noticeable unless you really looked at it.

Finally, the overall difficulty of the game was practically non existent. I played on the hardest difficulty at launch and I think I may have only died once during gameplay. This was something that a lot of people complained about and therefore I do feel justified in saying that is a big issue I have with the game. Critical mode came out after launch though and I took back what I said but still, the difficulty was appallingly easy first time round, they added an item called a “Kupo Coin” which allowed you to come back to life if you received a fatal blow during combat. Of course, this was a purchasable item in-game and was therefore optional.

Kingdom Hearts III, whilst flawed definitely brought back that feeling I had when I was a teenager of experiencing Kingdom Hearts II for the first time. It was definitely a magically journey and one I am so glad I waited for. With the current saga over I do hope to see where the next saga goes and hopefully, from how it feels, it continues on the darker path it seems to have set out.

Please do not disappoint us, Nomura.

Harry.

GOD OF WAR.

Son of Zeus. Ghost of Sparta. God of War. Single Father. See the odd one out? Well for this game, it happens to be the most interesting aspect of Kratos’s character development throughout the campaign! I have been so excited to talk about this game as it was flawless to me. The only negative point was there isn’t a sequel out already! I NEED MORE. The game is a cinematic masterpiece and honestly would of been my game of the decade had the others after this not been so close to my heart.

As a new fan of this franchise I felt that this was the right game to get started with, as this is a new beginning to the story, but set in the same universe as the previous three games. God of War opens with Kratos and Atreus mourning the loss of their lover and mother respectively. Kratos obviously struggles with new found fatherhood throughout the game, never calling Atreus by his name only by “boy.” Having had a complicated history with his own father, something that is covered in previous games, one would assume fatherhood wasn’t on his bucket list.

The game is an epic tale of fulfilling the final wish of a dying mother, to spread her ashes atop the highest peak of the nine realms, a mountain in the realm of Jötunheim. The game actually takes place in Midgard, the norse mythological name for Earth, other touristy destinations include Helheim the realm of the dead and Alfheim, realm of the Elves. With the previous titles being based around the Greek gods this new tale is all about the Norse gods and their mythology, obviously.

God of War is not only an amazing story experience, the gameplay is phenomenal allowing for different combat experiences. The ability to use multiple weapons, command Atreus to use his own magic in combat, even find magical artifacts that add their own spice to the flow of combat. The combat gameplay is a mixture of hack and slash and precision aim as landing headshots with your thrown axe grants special bonuses and the ability to freeze enemies in place, with Atreus using magic with different effects such as an electric arrow that summons wolves to do damage.

The boss fights. My word, the boss fights are astoundingly engaging and fun. There is a sidequests to destroy all the legendary Valkyries as they have been corrupted and are not fulfilling their duty of guiding the dead to “Hel”. There is of course a dragon fight, which is a heart racing fight a top an ancient elevator ascending a mountain. If you couldn’t tell, this game was an absolute delight for me, my personal favourite fight though, is on the back of a dragon. Yes, the back of a dragon. These are just a few of the incredible fights throughout the game.

God of War also offers varying difficulty options, one of them being “God of War difficulty”, in which I spent 2 hours to get through one area of mobs. I did not continue the game on this difficulty, I hang my head in shame. It was completed on the second hardest difficulty though, so my head isn’t hung that low. Go me. There are various armor upgrades and options throughout your adventure which were an incredible treat as I really enjoyed collecting them all and upgrading them to max granting me set bonuses and benefits to certain engagements. It wasn’t overly complex but it wasn’t overly simplified either, meaning on harder difficulties you weren’t able to brute force your way through the combat.

In all honesty, if the combat was removed and it was simply cinematics of the story I would still have paid the full price. Not only are the characters played brilliantly but the story is so incredibly engaging that time flies so quickly whilst playing, you really don’t want it to end when it does. It is honestly an amazing story of watching this God come to terms with the fact he now has to raise his son alone and to make sure he is raised properly and has respect for life and who he is. The story lightly touches on Kratos’s past, assuming this is to get you to play the previous titles, but Atreus learning about his fathers past is a big plot point during the game. It changes his character drastically and Kratos acknowledges this and must make sure he is true to himself and grows to be the man his mother wanted him to be.

The final act of this game is one of my favourites in gaming, there are twists and turns and so many plot points that I simply cannot be more excited for to see unfold in the sequel game. I hope to one day replay this game fully again and experience it all over.

Harry.

The 3D Pokemon Titles.

This summary for number three will probably be quite simple as there isn’t a lot to say about Pokemon as the franchise is so old now and changed so little other than the addition of new Pokemon. For many, Pokemon is a console seller and I think Nintendo realize this, they would be stupid not to as the most recent games sold 6 million copies in the first month making them the highest grossing Pokemon games ever. I highly doubt all 6 million of those people already owned a Nintendo Switch, hm?

Anyway, with the release of the 3DS during February 2011 the Pokemon fan in me was patiently waiting for the first of the 3D Pokemon games after the ironically enjoyable last 2D game, Pokemon Black 2 and White 2. This was ironic because the originals, Black and White, were just not that entertaining. However I would be getting used to seeing these titles as the first of the 3D games were not released until October 2013, two years after the consoles release date. As a long time Pokemon fan I of course watched the reveal stream for Pokemon X and Y the moment it went live, and since then I have been more addicted to Pokemon than I ever was.

The games were your generic Pokemon game, get your starter and collect eight gym badges and defeat the Pokemon League to become the champion. This has been a staple in every game since 1996. However, X and Y introduced my favourite mechanic there ever will be in a Pokemon game and this is what changed the game for me, that was Mega Evolution. A select few Pokemon were given the ability to evolve in battle beyond their normal evolution boundaries to change their forms and increase their power in different aspects. This blew me away as all the Mega Evolutions had unique changes to them and some Pokemon even had multiple Megas. One being Charizard, my favourite Pokemon.

X and Y also introduced better “shiny” odds for Pokemon, a unique variant of each Pokemon changing their colour palette and giving them a unique sparkle animation when they entered battle. The adjusted the shiny odds from 1/8000 to 1/4000 which was much more attainable and enjoyable as grinding for shiny Pokemon is a long process. This is when Pokemon became more of a completionist game for me, as I only used to play through the main campaign of the games using different and unique teams each time but X and Y gave me a proper endgame, allowing me to look for shinies of the Pokemon I liked.

This got progressively more fun as in November 2016 the next generation of Pokemon was released in the form of the games Pokemon Sun and Moon. These games actually changed the formula up for the campaign as instead of collecting 8 badges you needed to defeat different trials across different islands each with their own unique puzzle and boss Pokemon. This was a welcomed change for me as after 20 years it was about time for a mix-up to the formula everyone was used too. As I did with X and Y, I completed Sun and Moon and began to shiny hunt but this time I “evolved”, see what I did there, even further and began to create Pokemon that were “competitively viable.”

Each Pokemon game has an endgame activity where the difficulty was set higher and the A.I was much more advanced and could easily defeat your in-game teams, these were usually in the form of a “Battle Tower.” I finally wanted to dabble in this activity and realized it was important to have all my Pokemon the best they could be, stat wise, but I did this whilst shiny hunting them too. To this day Sun and Moon and the sister games, Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, are my most played Pokemon game because of how much I enjoyed the endgame content of the game.

Now, for the most important part of all of this rambling, the recent releases of Pokemon Sword and Shield, my favourite Pokemon games to date. These games completely astonished me. I was astounded at how much I enjoyed these games compared to any others. They added so many features that previous incarnations needed, for example the ability to change the nature of your Pokemon at will, using a consumable, and being able to transfer egg moves from Pokemon of the same species rather than having to go through the painfully long process of individually breeding them.

Gamefreak also began to add actual online elements to the games! Woo! Online raid battles where you can join random players to complete them or have private raids with just your friends, the games have needed a multiplayer feature other than just battles for such a long time and it came in the form of huge boss battles that still are not boring four months after release. I believe this is Gamefreak’s way of dipping their toes in the water, so to speak, of creating a much larger online experience for the Pokemon franchise, something I feel is needed for the evolution of the series in order for it to stay relevant in the gaming industry. Not only did they add an online activity they also created their own large open space in the games that can be played entirely online, which is fantastic, however a little laggy. This has been improved with updates, of course. In this space you can see other players running around or riding their bicycles, you can’t really do anything with the other players, apart from steal their food (?), but it is all pointing to one future outcome.

Now for the unfortunate reason as to why the 3D Pokemon titles are not higher up my list in terms of games of the decade, also why they are all in one category rather than separate. I have one simple reason that might seem negative at first. The games are the same. Whilst certain features of the games change and are welcomed, the core gameplay is always the same, this is not a negative thing about the franchise by any means. What I mean by this is when I buy a Pokemon game, and I think I always will buy them, is that I always know what experience I am getting out of it and how far that experience can actually go. I am never disappointed about that, just content, which is why it won’t go higher on this list. Who knows? Maybe the next generation will completely change the franchise in a really good way, but for now, it is what it is and I am happy with it.

Harry.

Jurassic World: Evolution.

2018’s Jurassic World: Evolution is the successor to the amazing game that was Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis, unfortunately it had an incredibly rocky start. Having less features than its predecessor it came as quite a disappointment to myself and many of the JW:E community. This isn’t to say that it didn’t have it’s positives, hence being on my top ten games of the decade. They also very much improved the game over time, with the developers slowly adding much needed features with every update.

This game severely improved upon the base campaign of the original, it definitely felt as if you were achieving something rather than just “building a park” full of dinosaurs. You are guided in your journey to rebuild “Jurassic World,” which is what the sequels are renamed too, by four main NPCs. Three of these NPCs are actually returning cast members from the films themselves, Claire Dearing played by Bryce Dallas Howard, Dr Henry Wu played by DB Wong and finally the very famous character of Ian Malcolm played by the ever so charismatic Jeff Goldblum.

Having these characters from the films actually come in and reprise their rolls for this game was very immersive and was such a delight as a long time fan of the franchise. This alone for me was enough to make it into my top 10, let alone above Far Cry, this is because whilst the original did have the actors from the films they only had set phrases to say. In Jurassic World: Evolution however they actually guide you on your way to operating these park(s). This is something I will go into later. Also Jeff Goldblum.

I remember the original game being very unforgiving when it wanted to be, screwing you over with features like tornadoes and dinosaurs spreading diseases like wildfire. However, this game definitely screws you over aswell in different ways; tornadoes and diseases are still around to kill your dinosaurs or destroy your park but they are far more forgiving now. The tornadoes don’t even kill your dinosaurs any more. This, whilst appreciated, took away the severity of the tornadoes allowing me to just get on with it rather than panicking about the destruction, as in the game it is much cheaper to rebuild enclosures than to recreate dinosaurs.

This isn’t to say the game doesn’t have ways to screw you over like the original. A top the main NPCs there are three factions, Security, Science and Entertainment. These factions have Head Officers that ask you to do mini sidequests such as photographing creatures fighting, or installing visitor shelters. The factions have a reputation system which is granted from doing their quests, if a faction has too little reputation in comparison to another, they may choose to sabotage your park. This is how the game screws you, by allowing them to make your dinosaurs fall ill, open the enclosure gates or even completely shut off the parks power supply. This, whilst annoying as a first time player, actually became quite a challenging and enjoyable feature as it always kept you doing something.

The game had some huge quality of life changes, allowing certain carnivores to live along side each other, as well as some herbivores and carnivores, which previously I do not recall being a feature. Perhaps the most amazing feature of the game being in charge of not just one park, but multiple across all the islands in the chain. In order to master all these parks you have to over come different challenges and difficulties each different island possess. One Island is incredibly small and you have to over come the space dilemma by enclosing different species together to save space. Whilst another island has lots of weather problems meaning you need to always be on the look out for broken fences, making sure your creatures do not escape. I loved the island feature because when one park was finished and there were no more missions you had another one to start on, increasing the play time of the game rather than it just being a one island sandbox.

As time went on the developers began adding new and better features such as the terrain tool, something that should have been there from the start. This allows you to change the ground to be sand or rock rather than just plain grass. They also added a feature to place singular rocks and trees for more detail when creature enclosures, this allow you to create certain “biomes” for your dinosaurs rather than every enclosure looking the same. Whilst these features should have been there from the start, they were not in the original and therefore were a welcome addition.

The developers also began releasing DLCs which had their own campaigns and islands for more interesting and unique content. This included extra dinosaurs, which was my personal want from the expansions, and some nice immersion features such as a new herbivore feeder that allowed you to feed different plants to the dinosaurs that preferred them increasing their park “rating.” Alongside the expansion DLCs they also released small “dinosaur pack” DLCs which included three or more dinosaurs for only a small price. This, to me, was an incredible way to keep the game alive and still fund the developers to make more content.

Finally, my favourite and most important part about the game, the dinosaurs themselves. Each dinosaur was animated and designed so well, they all had unique details such as the skin overlapping on the T-Rex’s neck or even their own unique killing animations when they fought one another. The dinosaurs all had multiple skins from a large pool to choose from, each change their colors in different ways. It was incredible to see all the dinosaurs with the unique behaviours and sounds all interacting with one another. It brought me many hours of joy to simply build enclosures and watch them simply live out their lives, in the post-game sandbox island it became more about the dinosaurs for me than maintaining a park. The visitors were minute in importance in comparison to building enclosures and watch the dinosaurs.

To sum up, this game was easily a top ten for me as it had been over a decade since Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis. When the game was announced I was giddy and so excited to play it, as it was one of the original games I played on the PS2. Seeing a proper sequel come to life on my PC was like reliving a huge portion of my childhood. Whilst it definitely had a rocky start, it was made up by the constant updates and changes to keep the game alive and interesting. I surely hope we get another game just like this in the next few years on the next generation of consoles, allowing them to make a bigger and better game in the long run. Whilst Park Simulator games are not my favourite genre, I still enjoyed the game on my first couple of playthroughs. The replay-ability is not something wrong with the game in itself but rather my own personal preference of genre as I would feel as if I am repeating myself each and every playthrough.

Harry.

In the next few posts, I will be discussing my top games of the decade, I was originally going to do this as one post, however I tend to ramble so that idea was scraped…

Far Cry 3.

Afterwards you are rescued by one of the game’s protagonists who introduces you the basic mechanics of the game. He teaches you how to live off the land using the skins of animals and plants to upgrade your weapon holsters and ammo capacity, as well as medicine. This was one of the highlights of the game as all the animals had their own habitats across the islands. If you wanted the best experience, you needed to explore and go off the beaten track rather than sticking to the linear path of the story. Sometimes, the carnivores of the island would even be hunting the player which added to the immersion during this portion of the game.

The plant exploration was not nearly as interesting, there were different species of plants, but that was such an unimportant factor that I never even bothered to look. The plants were used to craft syringes to enhance gameplay, giving you certain buffs and I found a lot of the syringes to be rather redundant as you could play through the entire game without using more than two, the healing syringe and the hunting syringe.

You are also taught about the different styles of play to progress the game. Using stealth and tactics to your advantage by throwing stones to lure enemies away from your position, or using the foliage to hide from them or using brute force and shotgunning your enemies whilst wearing padded armour. Stealth was my personal choice as it felt incredibly rewarding to take your time and gain extra experience points by completing activities without being detected. The main activity being enemy strongholds which are a staple in the Far Cry franchise.

The game changed my outlook on video games forever. I didn’t really understand the concept of different play styles at the time, as I was quite young when I picked this game up, but Far Cry 3 opened this up to me. That for me, changed how I saw games entirely which, in my opinion, is an incredibly high praise. It felt so rewarding playing it slowly and taking your time rather than brute forcing your way through, it even started my obsession with the minor things in video games such as gathering collectibles. In Far Cry 3 there are vasts amount of collectibles, all incredibly rewarding, gathering a certain amount of Dog Tags from fallen soldiers or gathering sacred totems, these all gave you unique and powerful weapons to use throughout your playthrough.

The collectibles were scattered across both the islands, however it didn’t stop there, each island had sub-regions with their own collectibles making exploration feel even better as you were rewarded for obtaining them. The game also had fairly minor side missions, such as freeing slaves or eliminating high value targets, this rewarded the completionist. Something which I very much am.

Now as I have rambled about the gameplay, let me get back to my opinion about the story. After you are taught the basics you find your way to a shroom loving doctor, from there the game gets…interesting. It goes a lot deeper down the rabbit hole, than rescuing your friends and getting home. As you progress through the story, Jason becomes more confident in killing and surviving and is gaining a reputation as the Island Warrior which grabs the attention of a tribal cult living on the inner island.

They believe you to be their prophesied warrior who will defeat the islands evil, starting a new group of “sacred” warriors. It goes a bit off the rails if I am to be brutally honest. However, it is still compelling. Especially Vaas. I would of been content if every cutscene was just Vaas. He is a “basic” villain, a deranged psychopathic henchman working for a mysterious benefactor tasked with trafficking holiday tourists and growing “The Good Kush.” He is played so wonderfully by Michael Mando, that every line he delivers is pure gold. He had a fantastic monologue about “The Definition of Insanity,” it is now a very famous gaming quote. Vaas, for me, was enough to keep me playing.

Then Vaas dies. 😦

Far Cry 3 is a solid number 10, it would of ranked higher, but the “main” villain is boring. After Vaas had been defeated the second island opens up and you must defeat the newest villain, the mysterious benefactor called “Hoyt.” He was no where near as interesting as Vaas was, if I were to compare it to a spectrum, Vaas and Hoyt were complete opposites in terms of compelling villains.

He was a mobster at best, after defeating him I felt underwhelmed after having Vaas as the main antagonist for the previous 10 hours of gameplay. The plot goes deeper than just this though, as once defeat and the islands saved, the tribal cult offers you a choice, leave with your friends or kill them and stay as their warrior. This took me by surprise. I had grown so fond of all the characters along the way that this choice was brutal, but I guess, it encourages multiple playthroughs, wouldn’t you say?

Overall, whilst the “main” antagonist was a huge let down, the gameplay and overall story of the game were not too affected in my opinion. The gameplay mechanics were delightful, the characters were all acted and portrayed so well, that this made it an easy choice for my top ten. Having only just been introduced to this franchise I then went onto playing many of the other games, but none of them caught my interest as much as ‘3’ did. It will be a staple to which all other Far Cry games will be compared to, for me.

Harry.

January 9th 2020, there was a Pokemon Direct and what a Direct it was.

Gamefreak have announced for the first time in the franchise’s long run, DLC will be released for their latest titles “Sword” and “Shield.” This actually came at great surprise to me as it is a very unusual move for them to make, it certainly shakes their forumla up a bit. The first of these DLCs, The Isle of Armor, releases June this year. Needless to say, I am waiting anxiously for it.

As a long time fan I own all of the main series titles in the Pokémon franchise, which includes their “sister” or “sequel” games which are usually just slightly altered versions of the previous games in the trilogy or quadrilogy. They are never more than the same story with altered dialogue, some slight Pokémon changes or new legendaries.

This is not the case with these expansions! They are re-adding Pokémon that were not available in the base game and even adding some new ones, a new Galarian form for Slowpoke was revealed, including the original legendary trio of Zapdos, Articuno and Moltres. It also appears to be adding two new legendaries to a group that the fans thought were finished with, these are two new Regi forms to accompany Regirock, Regice, Registeel and Regigigas. Thirdly, they are adding 4 NEW legendaries to the new roster of Pokémon this generation. A fighting type Pokémon “Kubfu” which evolves into “Urshifu.” This Pokèmon has two forms, one for Sword and one for Shield, with different typings to boot! Also Calyrex a Psychic and Grass Legendary that resembles a Goat. They are also adding new Gigantamax forms of the latest generation’s starter Pokémon, “Cinderace, Rillaboom and Intelleon.” Something I feel should have been in the base version of the game.

Lastly, something a lot of fans will be excited for, all previous legendary Pokémon will be accessible in the second expansion, “The Crown Tundra,” releasing fall this year, in the form of raid battles! To top it off the entire second DLC can be played in a CO-OP mode, another first for the series.

The announcement of DLCs has me thrilled and excited for the future of the main series games. The DLCs are roughly £/$15 each or £/$30 for the pass to gain access to them both at launch, this is MUCH cheaper than the £/$60 “sister” game they usually release. This allows them to add more Pokémon to the Sword and Shield Pokédex and new content and activites without the need to develop new games! They even teased that more will be coming!

Looking at Twitter, the reactions appear mostly positive with a lot of people who clearly didn’t listen to the information correctly as people seem to believe each DLC is £/$30 each which is not the case. A lot of people also seem to believe that they are putting returning Pokémon behind a paywall which is also incorrect, in the announcement they stated that even if you do not own the DLCs the Pokemon that are re-added are all tradeable and transferable (with the use of Pokémon HOME) without the necessity of purchasing the DLC themselves. This is great for anyone wishing to transfer their Pokémon from previous titles over to the current games.

What else can I really say other than I am ecstatic for the future of Pokémon and look forward to see if they decide to stick with this new content model for the forseeable future of the franchise!

Harry.

I have never really been the biggest fan of Star Wars, I always preferred Star Trek, I’m not the biggest fan of that either. I will gladly watch the films if I am looking for something to watch to fill the time, when I am grinding for shiny Pokemon, or I am doing something boring and repetitive and would like to just have something on in the background to fill the void.

However, I am writing this blog because I do not understand all the hate that the Star Wars films are getting? I understand that the plot across the new trilogy is muddled and confusing and is very disjointed but none of them were in any way bad films. I may not have liked The Last Jedi compared to the other films in the franchise but there were certain parts of it that were outstanding. As usual, the settings in all Star Wars films feel alien and mysterious, they always have amazing visual effects and certain scenes make you take a second to appreciate how stunning it was. (The lightspeed ship destroying the Supremacy, or the battle in Snokes chamber with Rey and Kylo).

I will say, that The Rise Of Skywalker felt the most “Star Wars-y” out of the three films. I was not bored during that film for a single moment, having seen it twice I believe I can say that with confidence. I liked the return of Palpatine as he was a much better villain than Kylo ever was, Kylo’s arc was all over the place. He was never able to convince me he was the evil mastermind behind the trilogy and had he been the final villain I believe I would not have liked the film as much as I did.

A lot of people seem to dislike Rey as she is considered a “perfect” character as she seems to be able to do everything, do I consider that a bad thing? No. She is the main hero, they made it very clear that the time of Han Solo, Luke and Leia are over, the new trio is obviously Finn, Poe and of course Rey. I think people clearly forget that Luke seemed to be able to do everything during the original trilogy. Anakin as well during the prequels, he won a death race as a child which he clearly should of lost. Luke had the courage to storm an empire ship mere moments after meeting a hermit Obi Wan and being told his dad used to be a Jedi.

The film has a lot of fan service, but yet, it seems to be a negative thing within the community and online? Since the previous film, The Last Jedi, shook things up in the lore of Star Wars I personally think J. J. Abrams did a great job with what he had been left with. Had I wished Palpatine’s return been explained more? Of course. Does it ruin the film for me? No, it was a question I certainly asked though. We all knew the dark side had the power to resurrect, we were told this in the prequels, so I used my imagination and put the two together.

With news that another trilogy is being planned, I certainly hope they take the time to draft the whole story they plan on doing, rather than telling multiple stories across three films whilst trying to somewhat maintain a main story line. Recent rumors have surfaced that the new trilogy will be set centuries before the original trilogy, when Master Yoda was just younger, this of course is speculation and could be incorrect.

I do hope in maybe 20-30 years time we get a new trilogy within the main series of films, one in which, Rey, Poe and Finn are older and Rey has trained a new generation of Jedi. Hopefully the villain will be a bit bigger on a universal scale rather than a galaxy sized scale.

That is all I have to say on the new trilogy of Star Wars, maybe I will do an actual review on the films at some point, but I am very drained with Star Wars and all the controversy behind it.

Harry.